When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer departed, and Ralf Rangnick came in, we quickly prepared for the arrival of Dutchman, Erik Ten Hag.
A manager with a solid reputation and one that the fanbase was very excited by, a focus on youth, a good football style of play worn Ajax and an astute manager who looked like the type of manager we needed, exactly the type, after a merry-go-round of managerial changes for the best part of a decade, all resulting in a relatively quick demise for each gaffer.
Ten Hag arrived and quickly, very quickly, set out his stall with the English media. He wasn’t going to entertain them, simple as that.
He hasn’t, ever since.
Ten Hag has no interest in being another Jurgen Klopp-style media puppet, allowing them to pull the narrative strings to create a caricature they can build content around.
You can believe me when I speculate that the English press pack hate this, and, they don’t have much affection for him either.
It’s as clear as a pane of glass, they’ve had the knives out for him and ready to stick them into him at any given chance.
A second season, after a successful first season, a first season where he corrected many of the wrongs before his time and set out a stall that would allow him to build nicely upon, fell apart spectacularly.
Injury after injury, drama on and off the pitch weekly, he’s had it all to deal with and, let’s be realistic, it’s been pretty underwhelming from a spectator’s point of view, but behind all these struggles, he still managed to add a trophy in the FA Cup, to make it a second season in a row with silverware.
It’s easy for those people to be kneejerk, to refuse to take any type of context to this, to ignore anything previous, and just want him sacked for some new shiny toy manager to be brought in. It’s a rinse and repeat system that will not work and has not worked, but these types of fans fail to see this, amidst an undying need for instant gratification.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for instant success, wouldn’t that be nice?
Isn’t that what Ten Hag delivered, in a way, in the first season?
He put some respect back on the United name, he brought Champions League football back, he won a trophy and got to the FA Cup final, and he delivered far earlier than we all expected him to
So why is it so easy to write this off, so easy to cast him aside? Why? Why not take a deep breath as many of us have done and afford him the time to continue this voyage under a new regime, a new background setup, new owners, and new football direction behind the scenes?
United are on the verge of embarking on a journey with football, yes the core topic of our clubs existence, at the forefront, for the first time since the Glazers took over, the American owners that have taken their foot off that pedal and solely on the financial surgery they can operate on to extract money from the club, by any means necessary.
Would it not be fair, would it not be the right thing to do, to give Ten Hag a chance under this structure, given we could see what he could do in the first season under a far different noise in the background?
You as a United fan have a role to play, have a job to do.
Defend the club, back the manager, support the team.
— Stanley Chow (@stan_chow) June 12, 2024
The three responsibilities we have as Reds, number two being one so many of us pride ourselves in. We back our manager, we throw a shoulder to the wheel and we go against the world with him.
Now, you need to do it again, as a new season’s dawn is approaching after the summer, accept that Ten Hag is the manager, our manager, your manager, he has the absolute best interests of this football club at heart, he thrives off developing players like Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho, he wants what we want, you know this deep down.
Allow him to achieve it, with your voice loudly behind him, from the first kick-off to the final whistle as we raise another trophy at the end of next season because we will, I truly believe that.
A fully fit squad, a few key personnel added to it, and a few unwanted annoyances removed from the squad and we will progress, we will achieve great things together and I, for one, cannot wait to get stuck into another journey with renewed buoyancy after the club has decided to stick with their man.
Why wouldn’t they? We all know…
Bald Is Best.
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One thing you learn over the decades as a United fan is not to give a flying one what anyone else says about us: newspaper columnists, tv experts (hah!) ex-players from the other, ordinary, teams, you name them, I ignore them.
Only opinions that count are our own ex-players who want the best for us, them I’ll listen to – not necessarily agree with. We are a click bait monster, space-fillers, tv schedule fillers. One of my most amusing memories is back in the 70’s when one of the tabloid rags devoted many, many, column inches to how we weren’t special any more, just an ordinary club. You know, like all the other ordinary clubs we use to sell our papers!
Hated, adored, never ignored.
Long may that continue.
In 10Haag we trust. THDL(TenHaagDefenceLeague)
Some of you fans are just buffoons. Where was your precious club before Ten Hag? Six Years without a trophy that’s where.